It’s winter at Northwestern, and the natives are restless. After the administration announced plans Feb. 5 to pave four acres of the Lagoon, students began to rumble and to grumble and, eventually, to organize. A new student movement was born: the Northwestern Open Campus Coalition (NOCC).
“Basically we have a short-term goal of delaying the construction on the Lagoon,” said coalition spokesman Evan North, a Medill sophomore. “We also have a more important long-term goal of gaining student representation on pertinent planning committees … We would like to have some official student representation.”
Nevertheless, one open forum with university administrators and one NOCC rally later, the Lagoon still appears to be doomed. Whether the coalition can snatch victory from the jaws of the construction equipment that will soon be dotting the Lakefill remains to be seen.
In plotting their final strategy, however, the organizers would be well-advised to refer to movements scattered throughout NU history for a “How To” guide to successful student activism.
1. Develop a realistic and legitimate goal.
In 1985 NU’s Traffic Institute became part of a State Department-sponsored anti-terrorist training program. “It offered substantial police training for all kinds of foreign nationals,” said University Archivist Patrick Quinn. “Among those it was found that there were quite a few members of death squads from El Salvador.”
Two activist organizations – the Evanston Committee on Central America and the Northwestern University Coalition on Latin America – had already organized to oppose U.S. intervention in Latin America. They exploited the Traffic Institute’s dealings with the death squads to localize the issue. After the groups organized a series of highly visible demonstrations, the university dropped out of the program in the summer of 1986.
The protesters were successful because they defined a legitimate issue, Quinn said. “The Traffic Institute’s actions stood so conspicuously far apart from the mission of the university that the argument against it was compelling … (In student movements) the idea is to put forward something as reasonable as possible that should be adopted that hasn’t been.”
2. Match actions to the issue.
“You cannot separate tactics from issues,” Quinn said. “Tactics are designed to help one win issues. They must fit the particular struggle involved.”
When about 100 students dramatically seized the Bursar’s Office in the early morning of May 3, 1968, to protest inadequate treatment of black students and lacking inner city recruitment efforts, members of the Board of Trustees called for immediate action. J. Roscoe Miller, then president of Northwestern, chose instead to negotiate with the students. Among other stipulations, the university agreed to actively recruit black youth from urban ghettos and provide separate housing for black students.
“Seizing a building may be appropriate in some instances and may not be appropriate in others,” Quinn said. “In this particular instance the demands that the African-American students made were reasonable.” Key administrators recognized that the situation “could be disastrous and started to listen to the students’ demands.”
3. Incorporate dramatic symbols.
Soweto was the largest black township in South Africa, and its residents were active in protests that brought an end to apartheid.
NU anti-apartheid activists recreated the village on the Rebecca Crown Center plaza in 1985. “They had replicas of the huts that existed,” Quinn said. “It was really high energy and high profile.”
The movement was ultimately unsuccessful in persuading trustees to divest stock in companies that did business with South Africa. But by creating striking symbols like the mini-village, the organizers “were successful in making the campus community aware of the perniciousness of apartheid,” Quinn said.
4. Facilitate good public relations.
“Everything’s got to be transparent,” Quinn said. He cited the use of “defensive formulations” during the anti-Vietnam movement that shook the campus. These tactics involved using the media to challenge opponents to answer questions or debate the issues. “You have to make it clear that your opponents are being unreasonable,” he said. “It has to be clear that your requests are just as reasonable as apple pie.”
The cliche says something to the effect that those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it. But perhaps those who do study history will find that reformers of decades past knew what they were talking about. Utilize these lessons that past NU student movements offer to help transform mid-winter gripes into legitimate activist movements. nyou
